suppresSTEM participant Sanger

About The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a not-for-profit research organisation and is one of the world’s leading genome centres. It shares the aims of the Wellcome Trust (its major funding agency) of improving human and animal health, principally through its programme of biomedical research. It is run by the charity Genome Research Limited (GRL).

The Institute’s defining characteristic is that it conducts biomedical research on a scale that few other organisations can match. Institute researchers and their collaborators capitalise on high-throughput pipelines and the Institute’s skills in DNA sequencing, model organism genetics and cellular genetics to produce new understanding and new resources that are widely shared with the worldwide research community. Institute programmes in infectious disease, human disease, cancer genetics, cellular genetics and models of disease are integrated to enhance efficient use of valuable resources and maximise the yield of new discoveries. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, the Institute is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally.

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s role in suppresSTEM

The Wellcome Trust Sanger institute will characterise the genomes of the organoids. By comparison of organoids derived from cancer and normal tissues, we will identify mutations in genes that drove the cancers, and characterise all the genomic alterations that accumulated in the tumours. The data will allow us to assess whether organoids with particular driver mutations and other genomic features respond to the antibody-based drugs differently.

Genetic characterisation of the organoids will take advantage of the established sequencing pipeline at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. DNA samples from normal, primary and metastatic cancer organoids will serve to produce sequencing libraries, which will be sequenced and analysed. In the analysis special attention will be paid to mutations in pathways that have previously been identified to be altered in colorectal cancer.